Sherman Alexie- ‘Evolution’

CORE 5: AMERICAN LITERATURE: Group A: Poetry

Contents:

▪ Biographical details (as already mentioned in the previous power

point presentation)
▪ Background
▪ Title
▪ Figurative Languages
▪ Critical Analysis
Background:
 Who is this Buffalo Bill?

▪ Buffalo Bill is also known as William F. Cody (1846-1917).

▪ An historical figure--an icon now synonymous with the American West, famous for
exploiting Native Americans.
▪ The establishment of a binary between "wild" and "progressive" subjugates Indians by
placing them in the role of savages, a representation that American history has repeatedly
thrust upon them.
▪ Despite supposedly championing the rights of Indians, Buffalo Bill certainly contributed
to their cultural confinement in his "Wild West" shows, performances that "contained
elements of the circus, the drama of the times, and the rodeo," offering a "unique form of
theatrical entertainment.
▪ The Wild West Show had as its theoretical aim the presentation of a pageant of the settling
and the taming of the West."
 To be continued:
▪ Buffalo Bill may be compared to other colonizing heroes in Western culture, especially
those who circulated a dominant ideology as their role in enhancing domination.
▪ His ability to disseminate representations stems not only from his ubiquitous stage
presence but also from the extensive publicity that presented his image.
▪ Certainly no individual, before the days of movies and radio, ever had such effective
personal exploitation.
▪ For nearly half a century he was continuously held before the public, in the pages of
nickel and dime novels, on the boards in blood and thunder melodrama and in that
astounding Wild West Show which toured from the tank towns to the very thrones of
Europe (Walsh 18).
 To be continued:
▪ The title of a 1928 book, The Making of Buffalo Bill: A Study in Heroics, suggests that the
phenomenon of Buffalo Bill was as much created by an eager audience as it was by Bill
Cody.
▪ Its collective gaze, like the gaze performed by museum-goers, constructed an impervious
ideal: "When they gazed upon the man himself they saw that he looked the part of hero"
(Walsh 17).
▪ Empowered with the iconic eminence of a hero, Buffalo Bill possesses the capacity and
authority to reproduce and distribute cultural myths.
▪ His conception of the "real West" extends from his imaginary relation to American ideals
that have themselves been formed by such hegemonic historical representations as
Manifest Destiny.
▪ The posters advertising Buffalo Bill contribute to the representational subjugation of
Indians, portraying them as features of a crude land that the military must rehabilitate
Buffalo Bill opens a pawn shop on the reservation
right across the border from the liquor store
and he stays open 24 hours a day,7 days a week

and the Indians come running in with jewelry

television sets, a VCR, a full-length beaded buckskin outfit
it took Inez Muse 12 years to finish. Buffalo Bill

takes everything the Indians have to offer, keeps it

all catalogues and filed in a storage room. The Indians
pawn their hands, saving the thumbs for last, they pawn

their skeletons, falling endlessly from the skin

and when the last Indian has pawned everything
but his heart, Buffalo Bill takes that for twenty bucks

closes up the pawn shop, paints a new sign over the old
calls his venture THE MUSEUM OF NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURES
charges the Indians five bucks a head to enter.
Alexie addresses the compartmentalization and commodification of
culture by supplanting Buffalo Bill's stage antics with a business venture:

Buffalo Bill opens up a pawn shop on the reservation Right across the border
from the liquor store And he stays open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week And
the Indians come running in with jewelry Television sets, a VCR, a full-
length beaded buckskin outfit it took Inez Muse 12 years to finish. (1-6)
Pawn shops tend to represent sites of unorganized accumulation, places that gather anything
and everything with the prospect of profiting from the vulnerability of others. By enticing
patrons with quick cash--an instantaneous materialization of value--the pawn shop
successfully confiscates living objects only to deprive them of meaning by re-offering them
for sale. Sherman Alexie adapts this story poignantly in "Evolution.”

In the first line: “Buffalo Bill opens a pawn shop on the reservation”– Buffalo Bill as a
metaphor for the US govt.

“The Indians
pawn their hands, saving the thumbs for last…” ---This line symbolizes how the Govt. has
taken everything.
Buffalo Bill opens a musuem

•Buffalo Bill closes his shop, and in its place opens

a museum.

•The Museum of Native American Cultures lets

Indians enter for five bucks a head.

•This closely mirrors what happens in history,

Native American artifacts have been exploited
from the people for generations and they are later Buffalo Bill– a
put into museums.
Colonizing Hero in
•When the Indian has pawned everything but his
heart, Bill takes that too. For a measly twenty Western Culture.
bucks.
Analysis of the Poem:

▪ Sherman Alexie illustrates the systematic degradation of the Native

American people and their culture.
▪ Alexie’s use of Buffalo Bill is significant in that it embodies imagery
and reactions from both White Americans and Native Americans.
▪ Buffalo Bills is a historically significant character in that he was
known to help “civilize the west.”
▪ Alexie manages to create an extended metaphor that highlights the
deceit that the American Govt. played against the Native American
community and subsequent usurpation of land, identity, and self that
they had to endure.
To be continued:

▪ Alexie shows the Native Americans pawning their “hands, saving the
thumbs for last… their skeletons, falling endlessly from the skin.”

▪ The Native American people begin to sell their body parts, but it
doesn’t stop there; it leads to “[…] the last Indian pawn[s] everything
but his heart, [and] Buffalo Bill takes that for twenty bucks.”
• This is showing how after the Native Americans lost everything
to the American Govt. they ended up giving up their “hearts”.
• “Heart” is the metaphor for the core of the Native American
Identity.

• The fact that “Buffalo Bill” put a momentary value on the

“heart” of Native Americans show the lack of respect the
American Govt. had for Native Americans as people.

• To the American Govt. the identity of Native Americans was an

item that they sought to profit from.
Further study:

▪ William F. Cody "Buffalo Bill" (1846-1917)

http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/a_c/buffalobil
l.htm
▪ Benjamin Branham: On "Buffalo Bill and the
Confiscation of Culture“
▪ Kramer, Mary D., "The American Wild West Show and
'Buffalo Bill' Cody," Costerus: Essays in English and
American Literature, 4 (1972): 87-97.
▪ Walsh, Richard J., The Making of Buffalo Bill,
Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1928.